Rice, President Bush’s Key Conduit to Israel, Picked As Secretary of State

As President Bush’s national security adviser over the past four years, Condoleezza Rice has been his key conduit for foreign policy, eclipsing the State Department in the day-to-day handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other burning international issues. Now tapped, as the nominee for secretary of state, to lead the very organization she has helped marginalize, Rice is expected to continue playing a lead role, something welcomed by many Israelis and American Jews.

Many anticipate that support for Israel’s strong anti-terrorist stance now will be endorsed throughout the Bush administration.

Bush picked Rice as the next secretary of state Tuesday, calling on one of his most trusted advisers and a woman who some say has been treated like a member of the Bush family. The nomination must be approved by the Senate.

“We’re pursuing a positive new direction to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, an approach that honors the peaceful aspirations of the Palestinian people through a democratic state and an approach that will ensure the security of our good friend Israel,” Bush said Tuesday in announcing the nomination.

“Meeting all of these objectives will require wise and skillful leadership at the Department of State, and Condoleezza Rice is the right person for that challenge.”

Bush also named Stephen Hadley as his new national security adviser. As Rice’s deputy, Hadley was considered a supporter of Israel on the National Security Council.

Hadley worked with Elliott Abrams, the council’s Middle East director, to draft U.S. endorsement of Israel’s Gaza Strip withdrawal, rejecting the Palestinian demand for a refugee “right of return” to their former homes in Israel and supporting some Israeli claims to the West Bank.

Analysts say Rice’s appointment is likely to change how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be tackled in the next Bush administration. As new Palestinian leaders emerge, Bush is likely to look for Rice and the State Department to play a leading role in bringing Israelis and Palestinians together and setting the stage for renewed peace talks.

But Rice also will have to change her focus from working for a constituency of one person to overseeing a large bureaucracy, and mending fences between the government’s internationalist foreign policy entity and an administration that often has ignored the State Department’s advice.

Rice’s predecessor, Colin Powell, who announced his resignation Monday, was seen in Foggy Bottom as a man advocating on the Foreign Service’s behalf. Inside the building, he was said to wear almost as a badge of honor the fact that he was not in line with the administration’s foreign policy hawks.

But many believe that by the end of his tenure Powell had been relegated to a more minor role, presenting a more appealing face to the Arabs and Europeans while the White House and Pentagon orchestrated a Middle East policy that often angered those same circles.

“I think, at a certain point, he gave up,” said David Makovsky, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I tend to think that if he wasn’t content, he was resigned to the idea that the U.S.-Israeli relationship was going to be driven by the White House.”

State Department officials long have advocated a more “even-handed” approach to Middle East peacemaking. They have sought international engagement and have been tougher on Israel than has the rest of the administration, criticizing steps such as the assassination of Palestinian terrorist leaders, which sometimes have caused civilian casualties.

The department also has been more hesitant to support Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plans to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip and erect a security barrier along Israel’s West Bank border.

Powell at times endorsed those criticisms, but it was unclear whether he truly agreed with them or was merely representing his organization.

“It was clear he came from an internationalist school of diplomacy,” said Lewis Roth, assistant executive director of Americans for Peace Now. “He saw the value of working in international law to try and solve problems multilaterally.”

Rice is considered less likely to follow that course. U.S. Jewish officials hope her appointment will bring consistency to foreign policy, minimizing concerns they had over the past four years of divergent policy declarations from the White House and State Department.

“We can’t have a divided foreign policy,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “You have to have a clear foreign policy, and hopefully Dr. Rice will have the authority to create a consistent policy.”

Rice has been Bush’s key conduit to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during a period of unprecedented closeness between the two governments, and Israeli reaction to her appointment was positive.

Rice is a “friend of Israel, and we anticipate that under her, our strategic ties with the United States will go from strength to strength,” a senior Israeli official said Tuesday.

As Bush’s national security adviser, Rice was a key architect of Mideast policy, and Bush seemed to rely on her National Security Council to spearhead policy development in that region.

Notably, Bush named Rice as a Middle East envoy in the summer of 2003, when there was a prospect for peace negotiations between Sharon and then-Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

Rice was a vocal advocate for Israel from her White House perch, lauding the U.S.-Israel relationship several times to Jewish audiences and putting the onus squarely on the Palestinians to abandon terrorism and establish a credible government.

“The Palestinian people must replace the failed leadership of decades and build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty,” Rice told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Oct. 25 in Hollywood, Fla. “A Palestinian state will require a vibrant economy, and it will find friends to help it build that.”

In an exclusive interview with JTA a day later, before the demise of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, Rice suggested that the best time for U.S. re-engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be when Israel disengages from the Gaza Strip.

“I think what you will see is, if Prime Minister Sharon is successful in moving forward on his disengagement plan, that that could provide a new impetus for the Palestinians to move toward reform as they get ready to take responsibilities in the Gaza, and it could provide an impetus then for a beginning of negotiations between the parties,” she said.

That stance isn’t likely to find fans among the Palestinians, who see Rice as more willing than Powell to overlook Israel’s commitments under the “road map” peace plan. Hamas has called Rice “a Zionist,” and Arab media at times have ridiculed her in heavily racist language.

Rice’s viewpoint also may not be wholly welcome among the Foreign Service bureaucracy she will oversee. Analysts who have worked for decades on Middle Eastern issues may seek more active engagement with Palestinian leaders emerging after Arafat’s death, and may not support the administration view that a significant reduction of terrorism is a prerequisite for peace talks.

Rice also has backed the security fence, but was a key influence on Bush’s decision to ask Israel to change its route to bring it closer to the pre-1967 boundary with the West Bank. On a visit to the region in 2003, Rice was shown a Palestinian presentation about the fence and the effect it could have on their livelihood, and came away concerned that Israel was separating too many Palestinians from their agricultural lands.

Rice has forged some ties with both Israelis and the American Jewish community. She often has been on the phone with leaders of both groups to explain U.S. Middle East policy and, more than once, to alleviate fears that the White House would sacrifice support for Israel to its broader foreign policy considerations.

Rice also has established personal connections, relating her history of growing up in the segregated south to the plight of Jews.

“I know what it means to be the target of intolerance and hatred,” Rice said in a speech to the American Jewish Committee in 2002. “Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, I lived with the daily sting of segregation. I also lived with the home-grown terrorism of that era.”